ensational accounts left by
a few wild-eyed, virus-brained socialists.

I do not know that I ought to pretend to rescue the class to which
William belonged from the same kind of oblivion. But by keeping
memories of the little daily things in life a preacher's wife learns
some curious facts about the nature of a priest--facts that should
enable the reader to make profitable comparisons between those of the
old and those of the new order, and to determine which is the real
minister and which is not.

One thing I discovered was that you cannot domesticate a preacher like
William on this earth in this life. A woman might get married to him
and hang like a kissing millstone about his neck; she might sew on his
buttons, bear children for him, teach him to eat rolled oats, surround
him with every evidence, privilege and obligation of strong earthly
ties and a home; but he will not live there in his spirit. He belongs
neither to his wife, nor to his children, nor to the civilization of
his times. He belongs to God, and not to a god tamed and diminished by
modern thought, but to The God, the one who divided the light from
darkness, who actually did create Adam and Eve and blow His breath into
them, who accepted burnt offerings sometimes, and who caused flowers to
bloom upon the same altars between times.

So William never really belonged in his own house with his own body,
his own wife and his breakfast, though he often rested there and seemed
to enjoy the latter. He was more at home in the Psalms. I will not
say he went so far as Jehovah, but when he was in a Leviticus frame of
mind very few of the minor prophets satisfied his cravings for the
awful. The gentle springtime of his heart was when he took up with
Saint John in the New Testament. He never professed the intimate
fellow-feeling I have heard some conceited preachers express for Saint
Paul. He was not a great man; he was just a good one and too much of a
gentleman to thrust himself upon a big saint like Paul, even in his
imagination.

And I do not know which has been the greatest influence in making me
what I am: the sense of reverence I had for him and his high Bible
company, or the sense of bereavement I had when, having fed him and
warmed him, he was still "not at home" with me, but following some
pillar of cloud in his thoughts toward his great God's far eternity. A
woman is a very poor creature. I think she hankers more for just love
than she does f